Let me introduce a sonnet that may illustrate why I advocate use of the form, or more accurately why I am personally committed to the form.

A look at the sonnet below will immediately reveal that my commitment is not to emulate the Bard, if that could be done,

It’s a bit of a stretch to say that IAm hardly attuned to our world of goreBut then to go and assume that, therebyI’m admirable stretches even moreI’m as complicit as those with no qualmsAbout loving a smackdown or fightingMy sparse good deeds and penurious almsMake few dents in the wrongs I’d be rightingWhat of the wars in which someone must serveI’ve avoided them all without thinkingSure I’m opposed, but I don’t have the nerveThe mere thought of assault leaves me blinking.Falstaff lay down on the field and played deadI play my war games inside of my head.

Iambic pentameter — well, the ten syllables, yes, mainly, but not always with the stress on every other one of them.

My rationalization for this is that this is the 2000’s and a poem should be able to be colloquial.

The first line of the second four is perfectly correct but the next has the ten syllables without the requisite alteration of stresses.

Part one deals with the shaky admirability of the person whose morals may seem impeccable. The next part suggests that moral culpability is not easily assessed. And the next gets down to the nitty gritty: Some serve, others do not.

I feel the last two lines do a reasonable job of achieving the distance that is the theme and admission of this sonnet poem.

Falstaff, that grand scourge of the soldier’s honor, whose cowardice is redolent of at least some implications of a gospel ethic, must play dead to achieve his survival aims. Nowadays, with the relative ease of avoiding direct service in war, what has the opponent of war to say?

If that opponent is me, he has to say that he not only happily avoids but that he is aware of the depths of hostility he possesses. Even though it is expressed entirely within.

Like this:

Sometimes all you need to regain sanity is a good song. And a cold drink of water.

Forget therapy.

Tom Petty has done it for all of us sensitive males who read about ourselves all the time and never know what to say or do (quite) in sorting out all the stuff.

The other morning I woke up — well, it was between night and day. And I was sufficiently strung out to require at least three hours of my Napster library as a sort of surreal accompaniment to extended, if amorphous, angst.

What struck me, as Napster rang down through A2 and Dylan and Emmylou Harris and various and sundry others, was that none of the things that generally will create a positive twinge did a darned thing.

The music just sat there.

Until I got to the T’s — Napster alphabetizes by first name — just one feature of the verbal anarchy of this odd moment in history.

Up came the Rick Rubin production of Tom Petty’s song “It’s Good To Be King”.

And there I was in the Nevada dawn, finally getting a grip. Finally sensing what was bothering me. This song has to be the most therapeutic thing out there, if you are a warped male who has acceded to the possibility that women are your equals and put away as many of the unresolved feelings inherent in that sea-change in the nether reaches of consciousness.

Letting them fester.

[The song is on the album “Wildflowers”.]

I am not inclined to do the lyric thing. Anyone who can Google will find the lyric with ease. Anyone who can do anything can probably get a copy of the song.

I merely want to say that sometimes, when you are strung out, the cheapest and simplest thing provides the cure.

Once May night in the 60s, I was having an anxiety attack in a suburb of Birmingham called Mountain View, on the way to visit a civil rights lawyer named Charles Morgan, Jr.. The city was burning in the area around the Gaston Motel. And I was angling for a trip to the ER.

We stopped at a little food counter and I went in and did my best Hunter Thompson act to obtain a glass of water and the young thing behind the counter said, cool as could be, “That’ll be TEN CENTS, sir.”

I was instantly cured.

Same thing happened with this nice Tom Petty song, which simply and honestly reflects what most of us males think from time to time. I would be good to have all the power in the world and subjugate everything and generally function in the deleterious manner that has created such happy realities as the prospect of immanent nuclear annihilation.

There I am laughing in bed under the kicked covers as Tom Petty condenses into a few choice ironies four decades of male angst.

I like the fact that Rick Rubin saw fit to let the thing just end with a weird but somehow apposite resolution. A major it turns out.

Like this:

The following was written September 27, 2001 in my apartment a few miles from Ground Zero.

CLEAN CARNAGE

If Hitler could have run 757s into Auschwitz and Buchenwald, there is little question that he would have done so. His compliant Incineration Brain Trust would have lauded such a “final solution” as a stellar example of clean and efficient carnage.

Instead of unsightly mass graves, inhaling the ashes of the decimated.

I wonder if the minds who are thinking about terrorism are willing to play freely enough to move out of convenient envelopes to perceive the most likely possibility of the future.

Some have compared, I believe correctly, the concentrated and instant destruction of September 11 to an atomic explosion. In seconds, lives and the material envelop in which lives existed simply vanished, incinerated in a cauldron of 2000 degree heat.

Here today. Gone today.

Why dwell upon such grimness? Because we must assume that the minds of those who perpetrated this “clean carnage” may not be thinking about their “next big thing” as a reversion to the terrorism of the past.

They may well intend to continue surprising the world with the ease with which such huge and tragic destruction can be accomplished.

We are in a war of wits. Which means we must face the sudden, inventive, easily-accomplished actions of September 11 and draw, from its elements, our best guesses as to what will be attempted next.

Like this:

This is the formal publication of New Rain, a recording that appeared during the 1970s, but which remains a definitive presentation of the life of Jesus in original music by Stephen C. Rose who wrote both the music and lyrics, with the exception of the ballad of Jesus, God’s Outlaw, whose melody was composed by Alice Statz. Alsice also arranged the entire composition.

Like this:

When people asked Jesus how to pray, he offered them the simple, enduring words of the Lord’s prayer.

Here is my “translation” of the prayer a song lyric.

Abba whose home in heaven isHallowed and holy is your nameLet your realm come your will be doneTil earth and heaven are the same

Give us this day our daily breadForgive the wrongs that we have doneAs we forgive those who do wrongLead us not into temptation

Deliver us from evil LordAnd guide us safely to your shoreYours is the power to heal and mendYours is the glory evermore

+

Abba whose home in heaven isHallowed and holy is your name

>>>Abba father is Jesus’s familiar address for the one we call God. It denotes a reality vastly different from the God of creeds and theology. This One lives in the realm of heaven which is the place where one can see and hear and understand, precisely as we cannot see and hear and understand here on earth. Unless we begin to forge some links with heaven. (This relates to our fundamental incapacity to arrive at “truth” about anything.)

Let your realm come your will be doneTill earth and heaven are the same

>>>This is what life is all about, our reason for being. If Jesus right, we are here to move closer to heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread

>>>We are not alone. Someone is there to give to us. And we have a right to call what is given “our”.

Forgive the wrongs that we have done

>>>But only if and as we can forgive others.

As we forgive those who do wrong

Lead us not into temptation

>>>We are human, after all.

Deliver us from evil Lord

>>>Ultimately we need deliverance. This is the conclusion of the prayer in Mark’s version.

And guide us safely to your shoreYours is the power to heal and mendYours is the glory evermore

+

Abba whose home in heaven is

>>>Abba is within all persons. It is possible to access within the reality of Abba which is love, acceptance, desire for our fulfillment. We are one with the one who forgives as we forgive. Abba is within us.

Hallowed and holy is your name

>>>Our world is laced with violence and profanity to the point that we cannot watch TV without being awash in it. The notion that anything is holy and hallowed is beyond reach of many minds. But just as Abba is within, so too in each set of eyes that reads these words there is the capacity to see holiness and hallowed-ness. We are a spectrum as is everything else.

Let your realm come your will be doneTil earth and heaven are the same

>>>We who speak peace and reconciliation are deemed naive and foolish or even as authors of evil, for from our utopian visions may spring unintended consequences that are neither peaceful nor reconciling. Nevertheless, heaven is inconceivable unless it is a place of peace and reconciliation. And Jesus wants us to pray always that earth be the same.

Give us this day our daily bread

>>>I hope you will make this little nook on the Web a daily bit of bread for you.

Forgive the wrongs that we have doneAs we forgive those who do wrong

>>>Consider how easy it is to sit exactly where you are and review all of those you have NOT forgiven. And consider that if Jesus is correct you can never be whole without forgiving, that Abba might welcome you into the fellowship of heaven in the midst of life.

Lead us not into temptation

>>>What about when we have already let temptation sieze us. How do we know? When we know what we are doing is dead wrong.

Deliver us from evil Lord

>>>It is evil to be yielding to temptation and the only way out is to face it and deal with it. Abba is there to help you get out of the bind.

And guide us safely to your shoreYours is the power to heal and mendYours is the glory evermore

I strongly recommend you visit my Lord’s Prayer Song page. It is a simple composition I recorded with my Radio Shack keyboard using an excellent little Plantronics mike — my effort to replicate pre-digital “field recordings” of the sort that turned me on to music in the first place.

You can do your own version.

Or you can sing harmony to this.

Abba whose home in heaven isHallowed and holy is your nameLet your realm come your will be doneTil earth and heaven are the same

Give us this day our daily breadForgive the wrongs that we have doneAs we forgive those who do wrongLead us not into temptation

Deliver us from evil LordAnd guide us safely to your shoreYours is the power to heal and mendYours is the glory evermore

COMMENTARY:

Abba whose home in heaven isHallowed and holy is your nameLet your realm come your will be doneTil earth and heaven are the same

>>>On certain days, in certain places we can see that earth and heaven are not that far apart. We have only our own experience of heaven on earth to go by. No one has ever seen heaven and reported back. Some visions exist, but they are less relevant than our own experience.

Of love.

Love as the fruit of good will, fellow feeling, magical connectivity, experienced interaction, good friendship, peaceful co-existence. I once had a memorable luncheon with a novelist whose name I will not drop. As we walked along the streets of New York he gestured to all of the people and asked, “Isn’t it amazing?”

“What?”

“They are not tearing each other apart.”

In most areas of the world today, people are not tearing each other apart. And in many areas people are enjoying one another, loving one another, affirming one another.

Not only is heaven on earth evident when people are in right relationship to one another and to Abba, but also there is the matter of earth itself, the vistas that are part of creation, not just Abba’s creation which is unfathomable and inexplicable, but our own, which we understand to some extent.

Heaven relates to quality, as Robert Pirsig implies in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Heaven relates to honesty as Kate Millett and other sharing authors make manifest in works like Millett’s Flying.

Heaven relates to the conjunction of visions. When I was between college and seminary I had two such visions. One of boats on the ocean coalescing with a star-filled sky so that there was no way to distinguish where the lights ended and the stars began, and one when I was feverish and coming through a cold at the Chapel of the Ognissanti in Florence, when in the midst of a solitary afternoon time in the largely empty sanctuary, a mysterious music rose up and siezed me somehow. In both cases what was impressed upon me at a level too deep ever to reject or deny was/is the ultimate unity of all.

The world wrapped in the penumbra of heaven — yet the world’s people unable always to see, hear or understand.

Give us this day our daily breadForgive the wrongs that we have doneAs we forgive those who do wrongLead us not into temptation

Deliver us from evil LordAnd guide us safely to your shoreYours is the power to heal and mendYours is the glory evermore

Abba whose home in heaven isHallowed and holy is your nameLet your realm come your will be doneTil earth and heaven are the same

Give us this day our daily breadForgive the wrongs that we have doneAs we forgive those who do wrongLead us not into temptation

Deliver us from evil LordAnd guide us safely to your shoreYours is the power to heal and mendYours is the glory evermore

I am not superstitious. Superstition pervades religion and, I believe, gives it a bad name. Though, possibly giving a bad name to religion helps clear the decks for a time that will move beyond the intolerance of religions to an acknowledgement that at bottom it is the values we live by and understandings we have that tell.

This is a preface to the uncanny tendency of the Lord’s Prayer or the Abba Prayer to produce results during times of waiting when an outcome is desired. This could mean saying it while waiting for an elevator. In this case, saying it or singing it silently (prayer is not for show) may simply take enough time for the elevator to come.

So any connection between the prayer and a result is purely subjective.

But I tend to use this prayer more and more to fill up spaces and I must confess I do pay some attention to effects and results.

I think praying that claims results is both absurd and not absurd. As with anything there is a spectrum from the manipulative uses of prayer associated with some television religionists to the non-expecting, non-manipulative experience of forms of grace that seem to arise when one is attuned to the prayer.

Let us assume that Jesus was and is the ultimate teacher of how one is to live. Let’s divorce that entirely from religion and creed and center it on some of the undeniable elements of that teaching:

The Beatitudinal way.

The Way of Suspended Judgment (Judge not.)

The Negotiational Way. (Do not go to law. Arrive at an agreement.)

Healing and Feeding as the Main Miracles — replicable by us.

And so forth.

This Teacher is the one who gave us this short, succinct prayer as THE prayer we are to pray. If we prayed nothing else, we would be safely within the bounds of Jesus’ teaching. Since Jesus brings good news of Abba’s nearness and presence, can we not assume that when we speak or sing this prayer in silence or out loud, we place ourselves within the stream of Abba’s grace?

A corollary is that when we are disappointed with the “results”, we fall into deep temptation if we get into convoluted reasoning that relates to how to make the prayer “work” for us.

I leave you with a paradox. It does work. But saying so does not make it so. One can only have one’s own experience and share it for whatever it might be worth.

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Lord’s Prayer Interpretation 7 September 2006

Abba whose home in heaven isHallowed and holy is your nameLet your realm come your will be doneTil earth and heaven are the same

Give us this day our daily breadForgive the wrongs that we have doneAs we forgive those who do wrongLead us not into temptation

Deliver us from evil LordAnd guide us safely to your shoreYours is the power to heal and mendYours is the glory evermore

FOCUS IS ON “WE” AND “US”

Abba whose home in heaven isHallowed and holy is your nameLet your realm come your will be doneTil earth and heaven are the same

Give us this day our daily bread

>>>This forever places Jesus on the universal side of things. Ultimately we are individuals only for the purpose of affirming our we-ness, our us-ness.

When I walk the streets and my mood is not overly-self-concerned, I try to look into the faces of those I pass to see Abba there. On a good day I see Abba in every face. Abba transcends all words and though intensely personal and within is also pervasive. Abba is the context of all life. Jesus taught us to pray as us.

Forgive the wrongs that we have done

>>>Here is the second plural reference in the prayer that Jesus taught. We are not even to include just our own wrongs when praying for forgiveness. That is a huge insight. We are to pray corporately as a universal community that inevitably stands in need of forgiveness, of a cutting of slack, of space to start over and so forth.

As we forgive those who do wrong

>>>Here is the third affirmation of we-ness. We is not merely those who do in fact practice Abba’s Way which is the way of forgiveness, of negotiation, of a transcending of violence, cruelty and wrath toward others. It is everyone. Everyone is involved in the need to practice forgiveness and to receive forgiveness. It is the simple reality of trying to live in the world. And it is also a testimony to our complete inability to recognize the ripples and waves that emanate from each person, creating the context for the need for forgiveness and the need to be forgiven. Our interconnection is not merely a matter of positive fact, it is also a matter of negative impact when our conscious and unconscious actions result in enabling chains of reaction that implicate us in the life and death of others we cannot see and will never know.

Lead us not into temptation

>>>Here is the fourth time the first person plural is used in this seminal and ultimately paridigmatic prayer. Not lead me. Lead us. We act so much more than we know with countless people looking over our shoulder, because we are sensitive at all times to who is evaluating us, even when they are far gone, or even strangers we conjure up in our endless personal dialog as we create our days and nights.

Deliver us from evil Lord

>>>A fifth plural. There is no I in this prayer. Does this mean we should not pray this individually? Absolutely not. We SHOULD pray it to ourselves. But we need to be aware that when we do we are affirming our universal commonality with all creatures.

And guide us safely to your shoreYours is the power to heal and mendYours is the glory evermore

Saturday, October 07, 2006Lord’s Prayer Interpretation 7 October 2006

Abba whose home in heaven is

>>> Heaven = A Realm Where Relationships are Right, Where We Are Free.

Hallowed and holy is your name

>>> Hallowed means treated with reverence, so too Holy. At some point in life, reverence kicks in. If it is to a lesser reality, like this or that celebrity, or nation, or thought, the lesser the … reality.

Let your realm come your will be done

>>> The mandate for all action toward justice and the establishment of the terms for love to exist in freedom.

Til earth and heaven are the same

>>> The project of existence.

Give us this day our daily bread

>>> All we need to live.

Forgive the wrongs that we have done

>>> We cannot total the wrongs as we are not party to all the effects of our actions and speech.

As we forgive those who do wrong

>>> Nor can we know all who may have wronged us, though we can blanket forgive them, not an easy thing to do for those with thick skins and long memories.

Lead us not into temptation

>>> The more we pray this the more we are likely to identify what constitutes tempatation for us.

Deliver us from evil Lord

>>> Evil is real, like trouble. We need deliverance from it. To the extent the world is oriented to this prayer we are at least alert to the processes and effects of temptation and of the evil that we as persons have a hand in creating, or in not preventing.

And guide us safely to your shoreYours is the power to heal and mendYours is the glory evermore

Posted by Adam at 7:45 AM 0 comments

Friday, October 06, 2006Lord’s Prayer Interpretation 6 October 2006

Abba whose home in heaven isHallowed and holy is your nameLet your realm come your will be doneTil earth and heaven are the same

Give us this day our daily breadForgive the wrongs that we have doneAs we forgive those who do wrongLead us not into temptation

Deliver us from evil LordAnd guide us safely to your shoreYours is the power to heal and mendYours is the glory evermore

Pain and Prayer

Abba whose home in heaven is

>>>> For me it is possible to sing this at my little Radio Shack keyboard next to my computer and banish pain, at least temporarily. As now. I have run through the tune of this in several rhythms and tempos several times and now the pain has receded. So closely interwoven are the physical manifestations of pain with largely-unfathomable mental and spiritual states that there is no simple or easy answer to why the recession takes place.

Teeth have been my big issue and I lost two recently and now feel intermittent pain from another. You do not want to know about this. I mention it only because the pain is not there now.

I advocate the use of this prayer as the main and even the only spiritual discipline. It is what Jesus taught. It has everything we need to be saying and thinking in it.

And it begins always with the acknowledgement that there is a parent of the universe, a loving force, a reality beyond and within, that (who) we are to acknowledge as our most intimate friend and companion.

A painless life is impossible. But a life that confronts pain, and all other events, with the Abba prayer, the only one Jesus taught and commended, close at hand is better lived than one which denies the very source of all that is good and right and positive in existence.

Religion is receding. Explicit creedal and conformist religion business has no place in the world that is being born.

Abba front and center.

Hallowed and holy is your nameLet your realm come your will be doneTil earth and heaven are the same

Give us this day our daily breadForgive the wrongs that we have doneAs we forgive those who do wrongLead us not into temptation

Deliver us from evil LordAnd guide us safely to your shoreYours is the power to heal and mendYours is the glory evermore

Like this:

This page remembers and celebrates Al Carmines, who died in New York City after a remarkable career as a minister who was also a musical and theatrical genius.
Al Carmines became my good friend when we were students together at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Al had come from Swarthmore, was — clearly and transparently — highly intelligent, and from the beginning projected the musical and artistic interests that were hallmarks of his long and creative days in this city.

Al and I used to go out to the West End Bar for late night snacks and down to Times Square for supper at Tad’s and a sci-fi flick. On Sunday nights we’d sing harmony while he played the grand piano in the Union Theological Seminary Social Hall. Mostly simple folk songs. “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” as if the Everly Brothers had adapted it.

I remember going town to Judson Church to see about a pastoral job. Howard Moody, Judson’s pastor, was polite but he clearly wanted more than a pastor. Al became his associate there and it was a perfect fit because Al was the one in a million who not only could talk the talk but walk the walk when it came to hands-on appreciation of, and personal creation of, cutting-edge music, dance and drama.

We kept up through the years. My dad had an aneurism in the early 80s and my brothers and I made a decision that he would have not one but two operations to ensure him continued, conscious life. The second operation was for a shunt to even the pressures in his head. After Al subsequently had his aneurism, I told him about the second operation when he was seriously depressed. I believe Al’s decision to have the shunt put in contributed to his recovery and to the productive decades he enjoyed subsequently.

Al was not completely well during these last several years. He would veer from one debilitating situation to another and he was in and out of hospitals and finally required full time in-home care.

At the same time, he was always Al — warm and loving, capable of sermons which were so completely his own that they will pass away with him, simply to be recalled with admiration and affection. Singing, increasingly songs like Give Me Jesus, at the piano at Trinity-Rauschenbusch where he had served many years as founder and pastor of the Rauschenbusch-UCC wing of the congregation, whose members were drawn in many cases from his artistic associations over the years.

I believe that creation for others is perhaps the most significant thing we do. And Al was always doing that. That he could come out of the warm, Southern evangelical tradition and absorb the philosphical and artistic air of everyone from Kant to Gertrude Stein to the Niebuhr’s, Tillich’s and Driver’s that he studied with — well the synthesis and consistent love projected out to all and sundry seem to me to be among the memorable marks of a life whose impact will be felt by many long after tears have been shed for his recent loss

Walter Rauschenbusch

COMMENTS

Bronx Bob said…

If you do a Google search on Al Carmines, the 20 plus pages of references offer impressive testimony about the influence and significance of this great composer, playwright, pastor, and theologian.

Although his failing health in recent years reduced his public creative output, those of us who attend worship services at Manhattan’s Trinity Presbyterian Church enjoyed Sunday after Sunday the special treat of his genious and spontaneity in the music program he directed and the thinking about life and issues of the day he brought to the pulpit.

Every year, I looked forward to attending Christmas Rappings — his masterful and delightful oratorio recounting the Biblical stories about Christ’s birth. Somehow we have to find a way of preserving this Christmas tradition.

8:18 AM

jackie said…

The important thing about Al is that his work go on. Not only his musicals, but his atitude that the artistic spark of creativity that lives in all of us is a spark from God.

3:24 PM

Stephen said…

There will be a memorial for Al in the main chapel at Union Theological Seminary at 5:00 PM on Sunday 6 November.

The seminary is located at Bruadway and 120th Street in Manhattan and the main entrance is at 121st and Broadway. James Chapel can beaccessed from Claremont Avenue but it is not known whether that entrance will be available.

My plan is to leave this blog up so that it can be used to post other recollections or comments using this comment feature. I would appreciate the comments having to do with Al and his contribution and life. Best, S
10:46 AM

Vince said…

I am glad to find somewhere to collect and listen to stories about Al Carmines. I did not know him well, but when I wandered into his church as a sophomore at NYU, I fell in love with the man. I remember vividly that he was in the back room smoking two cigarettes at once. We began to talk and in a few minutes he asked me to sing “Old Rugged Cross” during the service. When I came back a month or so later he stopped in the middle of the service and had me sing “Old Rugged Cross” again. That day he said what must have been a ten minute prayer for a man named Princess Pansy that he had met at a bar the night before. He was truly one of the most interesting and inspiring men I have known, and I wish I could have gotten to know him better. As I head to seminary in the fall, it will be to do ministry as Al did it, honestly and joyfully.

Listen to New Rain. This is a recording recounting the life of Jesus I wrote and made in the 1970s. It is over 50 minutes but worth a hearing, I believe. Just Click the play button. Adjust volume on your computer. Enjoy.

How beautiful upon the mountainAre the feet of those who preachGood news good newsGood news how beautiful

VERSE 1

Instead of the thorn treeShall rise up the fir treeInstead of the briarThe myrtle shall you see

CHORUS

How beautiful upon the mountainAre the feet of those who preachGood news good newsGood news how beautiful

Judge not that you be not judgedCondemn not lest you be condemnedFear not for all lives they are judgedWe shall be all judged by Abba’s loveOh yes we shall all be judged by Abba’s loveOh we are all judged by Abba’s love

Blessed are you poor in spiritHeaven’s kingdom shall be yoursBlessed all who mourn and sufferKnow that Abba’s love enduresBlessed all you meek and humbleYou will own this whole world wideBlessed every justice seekerJustice shall not be deniedBlessed all who practice mercyMercy then you shall receiveBlessed all you pure-in-heartedYou will have no cause to grieve

VERSE

Though you may face persescutionAbba’s kingdom you shall knowAll who suffer for my name’s sakeTo that blessed place shall goJesus made these simple statementsBy the Galilean lakeOnly as they are rememberedDo we know which path to takeKnow the truth is not defeatedThough the earth see miseryHappiness and joy are treasuresFor all those with eyes to see

CODA

Blessed are you poor in spiritHeaven’s kingdom shall be yoursBlessed all who mourn and sufferKnow that Abba’s love enduresKnow that Abba’s love endures

Words and Music c copyright 2006 by Stephen C RoseYour free original copy.Licensed to CCLI and LicenSing100 Percent

Verse 1A mighty fortress Abba GodA bulwark never failingWho stands with us amid the floodOf mortal ills prevailingThere is an ancient foeWhose still may work us woeBe with us in this hourAnd hold us in Your powerThat we may love You only

Verse 2Oh Jesus died that we might liveAnd share this earth’s abundanceLearning to love and to forgiveIn faith and joy and wonderHe broke Satanic chainsAnd like the cleansing rainDrove death’s domain awayAnd now there but remainsOur blindness to the victory

Verse 3Yet still the principalitiesAnd powers of evil flourishWherever vain confusion reignsAnd hatred’s flames are nourishedBut we are bold to sayWe know a better wayIt is the way of faithThough we be made of clayThrough Jesus it shall save us

Verse 4There is in every earthly powerThe seed of prideful dreamingAnd we still build our Babel towersConfusing all life’s meaningsBut still this world enduresOur future is secureWe live amid a graceNo power can defaceAnd faith shall triumph through us

All praise and thanks to YouWith hearts and hands and voicesWhat wonders You have doneIn You this world rejoicesAnd from our parents’ armsYou bless us on our wayWith countless gifts of loveThey still are ours today

All praise and thanks to YouFor choosing to be near usWith gifts of hope and joyAnd blessed peace to cheer usYou circle us with graceYou guide us when perplexedYou free us from all illsIn this world and the next

1.With open arms O JesusWe need you to be nearCome closer and release usFrom every doubt and fearWe are but wand’ring pilgrimsWho seek salvation’s shoreGuide us to hope and refugeAnd peace forevermore

2.With open hearts O JesusWe beg you enter inFor only you can take usBeyond all pride and sinRenewed in mind and bodyRevived within our soulsWe cannot live without youWith you we are made whole

3.With open hands O JesusWe take your hand in oursWe know your touch can heal usAnd lead us past the starsAnd then the realm of AbbaWill be no distant thingAs then so now and alwaysThe kingdom is within